interior. She disappeared within; came out again, walked a little way
towards Brent, and spoke with a timid smile.

"Will you please come this way?" she said. "Mr. Crood will see you."

Brent strode up the hall, the girl, preceding him, pushed open the door
which she had just left. He walked into a big room and, through a fog of
tobacco smoke, saw that he was in the presence of three men, who sat in
arm-chairs round a hearth whereon a big fire of logs blazed. Behind
their chairs a table was set out with decanters and glasses, a
tobacco-jar and cigar-boxes: clearly he had interrupted a symposium of a
friendly and social sort.

The visitor's eyes went straight to the obvious master of the house, a
big, heavily-built, massive-framed man of sixty or thereabouts, who sat
in state on the right-hand side of the hearth. Brent took in certain
details of his appearance at a glance: the broad, flabby,
parchment-hued face, wide mouth, square jaw, and small, shrewd eyes; the
suit of dead-black broadcloth, and the ample black neckcloth swathed
about an old-fashioned collar; he noted, too, the fob which dangled from
Alderman Crood's waist, and its ancient seals and ornaments. A survival
of the past, Alderman Crood, he thought, in outward seeming, but there
was that in his watchful expression which has belonged to man in every
age.

The small shrewd eyes, in their turn, measured up Brent as he crossed
the threshold, and Crood, seeing what he would have described as a
well-dressed young gentleman who was evidently used to superior society,
did what he would certainly not have done for any man in
Hathelsborough--he rose from his chair and stretched out a hand.

"How do you do, sir?" he said in a fat, unctuous voice. "The cousin of
our lamented Mayor, poor gentleman, of whose terrible fate we have this
moment learned, sir. I can assure you, Mr.--Brent, I think?--and
whatever other relations there may be, of our sincere sympathy, sir--I
never knew a more deplorable thing in my life. And to happen just as you
should arrive on a visit to your cousin, Mr. Brent--dear, dear! The
constable who came to inform me of what had happened mentioned that
you'd come, and we were just talking--But I'll introduce you to these
gentlemen, sir; allow me--Mr. Mallett, our esteemed bank manager. Mr.
Coppinger, our respected borough treasurer."

Brent silently shook hands with the two other men; just as silently he
made a sharp inspection of them as the